


Snowflakes that Stay on My Nose and Eyelashes

by anneapocalypse



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Fluff, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 05:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9642161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: When you're stranded in an icy chasm with no way in or out, you learn to appreciate the good things, like hot cocoa and stolen kisses.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER** : This fic takes a canon-typical view of guns and gun violence and people getting shot, which is to say it doesn’t take it very seriously. Never ever point a gun at anything you don’t want dead, etc.

It’s snowing over Messina Chasm, which means it’s a little warmer than usual. The shimmer of flakes coming down steady in the silver-white light makes it feel almost cozy. Well, admittedly, it’s easier to feel cozy in temp-controlled armor. Could be cozier. A cup of hot cocoa would be nice.

Agent Ohio wonders idly what time of year it is back on her home colony, if in fact her home colony hasn’t been glassed yet in the months she’s been cut off from news of the war. The UNSC standard calendar is based on Earth, somewhere Ohio’s never been and will almost certainly never go. And here in the antarctic region of Charybdis X (the barely-habitable poles were the only part of the planet to escape Covenant glassing years ago), there are no seasons, just ice and cold and the occasional snow, though often it’s too cold even for that.

Ohio peers through her rifle scope, trying to get a clear view across the bridge through the snow, which seems to be falling thicker with every passing minute. That plus high winds over the chasm brought their morning skirmish to a halt. Shame. She was really looking forward to infiltrating Outpost Scarlet today. The objective: hot cocoa mix. Idaho’s intel suggests their enemies have been sitting on a cache. Possibly even with _mini marshmallows._

This will not stand.

Trouble is, infiltration’s a bit of a problem. There’s no back way into either base—they’re built right into the solid rock and the only way in and out is the front. So they stare each other down across the bridge, fire some shots, make the occasional run at each other’s bases. But there’s not usually much opportunity for stealth. Ohio thinks wistfully of those armor enhancements used by the top squads back in Freelancer. You needed a computer to run them and Ohio never had high enough combat scores to even be allowed one for training, but they were just so _cool._ There was one that could make you run _super_ fast—that was Agent Carolina’s, Alpha Squad leader, the coolest person Ohio could possibly imagine. She heard, though she’d never seen it in action, that there was even a mod that could turn you invisible. Invisible! How cool was _that?_

But they’re not that cool. They’re not Alpha Squad, and they’re not Freelancers anymore. Not really. And that’s okay. It really is.

It just means that if Agent Ohio wants her hot cocoa, she’ll have to get creative.

 

The snow’s heavy enough now to pretty thoroughly obscure visual. First time she’s seen a storm quite this bad here.

Maybe she can use it to her advantage.

“Cobalt, huddle,” she says over TEAMCOM. “I’ve got an idea.”

“Oh _no_ ,” says Iowa.

“I’m gonna get across this bridge. I’ve got a plan.” Actually, she’s got like half a plan, but they don’t need to know that. She’ll figure out the rest as she goes. “The snow will provide cover, but if any of them are looking, they’ll see me on radar. I need a distraction.”

“Why don’t you just take the underbridge?” says Iowa.

“We used the underbridge _last_ time we attacked. They’ll be expecting that. We have to change it up.”

“Or,” Iowa says ponderously, “what if _they_ know that _we_ know that they’d be expecting us to use the underbridge, and so they’re expecting us _not_ to use the underbridge and—”

Ohio groans. “Stop overthinking it! I wanna use the snow for cover! It’s a good idea!” She pauses, pondering. “We just don’t have any way to mask a heat signature, or hide our IFF tags. But if we can get them looking somewhere else, long enough for me to get in and out…”

“Looking at what?” Idaho points out. “You just said, there’s like, zero visibility. What could they even look at?”

“We still got a whole crate of flashbangs, don’t we? You guys can figure out something with those!”

“Like what?” Iowa says.

Ohio waves impatiently. “I don’t know, something with… flashing! and banging! Get creative!” She might regret that last part, but what the hell. The guys will have fun, she’ll get to complete her objective, and they’ll all get hot cocoa. Win-win-win.

 

This is the kind of thing Vera dreamed about, when she got picked for Freelancer. Not that she minds the straight-up guns blazing frontal assault kind of op but stealth is just so much _fun_ and she always thought… well, she figured Special Ops would be more of the fun stuff.

Then she tanked her first infiltration test. Choked in the first five minutes, botched the security override and it left her so flustered she misread her HUD map, made three wrong turns on the training course, and hit maybe two out of the thirty targets from there on. It was so humiliating, she still feels miserable thinking about it. Connie offered later to run some hacking scenarios with her, help her get up to speed, but it was Wash’s offer to give her some marksmanship pointers that really made her feel bitter. Because if nothing else, Ohio _was_ normally a halfway decent shot—not as good as Wash, no, but decent. And she’d fucked up even that.

But she’s not a Freelancer anymore. She has a team, a mission, and an objective. There are no combat scores out here in Messina Chasm, no leaderboard, no automated training matches, no numbers stacking up to rank you by skill and squad and your worth as a human being. Just two peculiarly well-stocked bases in the middle of nowhere and a bridge between them, stuck over an icy ravine on a mostly-dead planet. And she, Agent Ohio—she still likes the names, even if they aren’t Freelancers—may not have fancy armor enhancements, but she has the cover of snowfall, and her two best friends.

And she is _going_ to get that cocoa.

 

Ohio stays low, activating the maglock on her boots to keep herself steady as she creeps along the righthand guardrail. There’s cover enough along the bridge, which will help keep off visual, if not off radar. She halts about a quarter of the way, taking cover, and hisses over the radio, “Okay. _Now_.”

For a minute she doesn’t hear anything, and she wonders if the guys forgot about her, or got distracted. Wouldn’t be the first time. But then she hears, beneath her feet, a bang, and another bang, and on her radar she can see movement at Outpost Scarlet.

Ohio smiles to herself. The underbridge. Maybe Iowa had the right idea after all.

 

She has to turn off the maglock on her boots to move quicker and quieter, and it’s terrifyingly slippery on the bridge with all the snow. Emboldened by the commotion below, Ohio moves to the center of the bridge, skidding and sliding from one cover spot to the next as quick as she can. Closing in on the base, she makes an all-out run for it, allowing herself for just a minute to pretend she’s got super speed _and_ invisibility, propelling her toward her goal with perfect stealth, speed, and grace.

She only loses her footing when she’s nearly there, careening into the nearest wall with a shriek her helmet mercifully muffles. Ohio gets to her feet, shaking the snow from her gloves. It’s accumulated all over her in the short time she was in the open, and wet clumps slide off the top of her helmet. She shakes her head impatiently. To the ration crates. Find that cocoa.

 

Gotta admit, she admires what Sherry and her team have done with the place. They were settled in here a good few months before Ohio and the guys showed up, and it shows in the little decorative touches, supply crates creatively arranged to make a mini-bar and relatively comfortable seating. There are a few neat-o alien weapons hanging on the walls, things Ohio doesn’t know the names of but which look vaguely familiar. There are clearly delineated _rooms_ in their base, something Idaho’s been pushing for in their own. Vera has a habit of just plunking down any old place with her rations, and the idea of playing house with the base isn’t really her thing, but Ezra’s always had more of an eye for the details.

Looking at how nice their enemies have their kitchen set up, though—crates lined up all neat to form a countertop and cabinets of a sort, all their rations sorted and organized—Ohio can kind of see his point. Something homey about that. And this is home now, after all. She’s surprisingly okay with that.

Now to find that hot cocoa.

She can still hear pops and bangs and shouts coming from outside. Better get what she’s looking for—better _acquire the objective_ —before the guys use up all their flashbangs.

Ohio gets to pawing through the rows of MRE packets. Her gloves are wet and the packets are slippery in her grip. Probably should’ve thought of how she was going to carry stuff back. She finds entrees aplenty, and almost pockets a few mac and cheese because really you can never have too many of those, but no, she needs to save all her carry capacity for what she came for. Cocoa. Focus, Ohio.

Snack packets abound too, smoked almonds and peanuts and vegetable crackers and that wheat snack bread that’s distinctly like gnawing on cardboard. Drink mixes in various flavors, lemon-lime and grape and ooh, cherry— _focus_ , Ohio.

She stands, hands on her hips, surveying the kitchen. There’s a hot plate just like they have at Outpost Cobalt, they _must_ have hot drink mixes somewhere…

Hah! A couple of smaller boxes stuffed behind the entree packets, well-hidden, but not too well-hidden for _Agent Ohio!_ Outpost Cobalt is long overdue for some chocolatey goodness and by gosh, it’s about to be theirs. She digs out a fistful of packets and stuffs them into her armor’s storage compartment. Upon a moment’s thought, she grabs a few packets of coffee creamer, too. Ezra goes through the stuff like it’s going out of style—

“ _Going_ somewhere, sweet cheeks?”

Ohio scrambles to her feel, whirling around. She finds herself starting down the barrel of Sherry’s sidearm, her opponent’s chin tilted up in triumph.

“Well, well, well,” Sherry says smugly. “Looks like I caught me a Cobalt. Hands where I can see ‘em.”

It’s moments like this that Ohio becomes very aware of the good few inches Sherry has on her.

She’s always had a thing for tall girls.

Ohio raises both hands in surrender. “Guess you got me.” She notices that she can still hear the occasional rattle rifle fire and flashbangs from outside.

She notices that Sherry has opened a private channel between them, and that she has _not_ radioed her team—not even to notify them of the capture.

“Can’t we talk about this?” she offers.

Sherry waves her free hand dramatically. “Oh, we _tried_ to negotiate before, _Cobalt!_ And we all know where that led!”

“It was a different time—”

“It led to _bullets!_ In the _foot!”_

“Times change!” Ohio says. “We can put an end to this! Sit down at the table of peace or whatever! Share a drink as sisters and brothers in arms!” She cocks a hip, levels her gaze at Sherry. “Perhaps a drink of… _hot cocoa!”_

“Oho!” Sherry cries. “So _that’s_ what you’re after, eh Cobalt? Who spilled the beans, huh? The… _cocoa_ beans, or whatever, I—shut up, it sounded way better in my head.”

“My people suffer!” Ohio wails. “We suffer, cold and frozen, and… without _chocolate._ Or marshmallows!”

Sherry takes a purposeful step forward. Holsters her sidearm, and then takes off her helmet, and steps closer, closer, until she’s got Ohio practically pinned against the counter..

“You,” she says in a low, meaningful voice, over the howling of the wind outside the walls, “think you can _sweet-talk_ me, Agent Ohio?”

Vera reaches slowly for her own helmet seal, touches the release and lifts it off her head, a few stubborn bits of snow sliding off. “I think maybe I _can, Sherry._ ”

“Oh,” Sherry says with a smirk, her armor clunking against Vera's where their breastplates meet, “you’re _really_ in trouble now.”

 

Sherry tastes like cherry-flavored drink mix. Vera’s favorite kind.

The thing about Sherry is, she may be a filthy Scarlet, but she kisses _real_ nice, as Vera knows from experience.

So, Vera might’ve had _some_ ulterior motives for wanting to infiltrate Outpost Scarlet alone. What do you want from her. You really do learn to appreciate the good things in life, in a place like this. And their stolen kisses have become one of Vera’s very favorite things.

 

“Hey!” Darryl hollers from the entrance. “Makeouts in the base! Treason!”

“Yipes!” Vera fumbles her helmet back on. “Gotta go!”

Sherry winks salaciously before helmeting up in turn. “Hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.”

 

“Vera!” Mike chirps over TEAMCOM as she stomps her boots off in the entryway, shaking off her helmet. “We thought you were taken prisoner! But don’t worry, me and Idaho were gonna launch a rescue mission to save you! We had a plan and everything. Well, sort of…”

“Save it for next time, soldier!” Ohio grins, bringing forth the spoils of war to show off. “Another successful mission for Team Cobalt.”

“Aw yeah!” Ezra comes up to examine the loot. “Mini marshmallows, heck yeah! I told you they were holding out on us!”

“Good intel,” Ohio declares. “And good work, both of you. I couldn’t have done it without my team.” She claps Ezra and Mike on the shoulders, grinning. “Now one of you go boil some water and lets mix these bad boys up.”

 

The water boils quickly on their little hot plate, Mike dumps three packets of cocoa mix into their three steel cups and Ezra pours.

“Don’t burn your tongue!” Vera warns, as Mike takes a hasty first sip anyway, yelping and sputtering.

She blows on her cocoa, watching the mini marshmallows melt into little white sugar blobs on the surface, and when she takes that first sip at long last, she closes her eyes, savoring it. Sweet, chocolatey, perfectly hot and comforting. Tastes like home.

When she opens her eyes, she sees the snow's beginning to let up at long last, and she can just make out Sherry on the other side peering through the scope of her sniper rifle. No doubt Team Scarlet are already plotting their counterassault. Cobalt’ll have to keep their heads on a swivel. Be ready.

Ohio smiles, and takes another sip of her cocoa.

Feels like home.


End file.
